Casey Anthony walks to an SUV with her lawyer, Jose Baez, after she was released from the Orange County Jail in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday, July 17, 2011. (AP Photo)

(CBS/AP)Updated July 17 1:00 a.m. ET

ORLANDO, Florida (AP) — Casey Anthony was freed from a Florida jail early Sunday, 12 days after she was acquitted of murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in a verdict that drew furious responses and even threats from people across the U.S. who had followed the case with rapt attention.

Anthony, wearing a pink T-shirt with blue jeans, left the jail at 12:14 a.m. local time with her attorney, Jose Baez. She was given $537.68 in cash from her jail account and escorted outside by two sheriff’s deputies armed with semi-automatic rifles. Neither Anthony nor Baez said anything to reporters and others gathered outside.

She then climbed into an SUV with her attorney and sped off, destination unknown. News helicopters trailed them for a while.

Anthony, 25, had been finishing her four-year sentence for telling investigators several lies, including that Caylee was kidnapped by a nonexistent nanny. With credit for the nearly three years she’s spent in jail since August 2008 and good behavior, she had only days remaining when she was sentenced July 7.

“This release had an unusual amount of security so, therefore, in that sense, it would not be a normal release,” said Orange County Jail spokesman Allen Moore. “We have made every effort to not provide any special treatment for her. She’s been treated like every other inmate.

Moore said there were no known threats received at the jail. Officials had a number of contingency plans in place, including plans in case shots were fired as she was released.

Orange County Jail officials had planned to release Anthony sometime Sunday under circumstances they refused to disclose. Experts had said she would be released in the dead of night, and her defense team did their best to keep her away from the glare of the media spotlight.

However, more than a dozen television trucks already were outside the jail by noon Saturday, though the facility was otherwise quiet. Scores of reporters and cameramen surrounded the outside later on in the day, along with a few scattered protesters.

One of her attorneys, Cheney Mason, said Friday that Anthony was scared to leave jail, given numerous threats on her life and the scorn of a large segment of the public that believes she had something to do with the death of her daughter, Caylee.

Anthony was acquitted of first-degree murder in Caylee’s death earlier this month. She was found guilty of four counts of lying to police, but with time served and good behavior credits, she didn’t have to serve out her four-year sentence.

Another attorney, Charles Greene, said Friday that Anthony was “emotionally unstable” and needed “a little breathing room” after the draining two-month trial.

That could be difficult, given the vitriol directed at Anthony. After the verdict, anger spilled onto social networks like Facebook and Twitter from people who had spent weeks watching the trial on local and cable television channels. On Friday, Anthony’s legal team said it had received an emailed death threat with a manipulated photo showing the 25-year-old woman with a bullet hole in her forehead. It has been forwarded to authorities. Officials had said earlier this week that they had not received any credible threats, but they did not return a phone call about that email.

In Orlando and elsewhere, many remain convinced Anthony isn’t totally innocent. David Waechter recorded the trial and watched it at home with his wife every day after work. He said Anthony was guilty of “something, for sure.”

“I’m perplexed. You know there is something there, but you don’t know what,” he said. “Yet she is getting out.”

Others who have witnessed Anthony’s saga with front-row seats said they were ready for the media attention to die down.

“Most people I talk to, they’re done with it,” Mandy Williams, a 38-year-old county parks employee, said outside a busy grocery story. “When it came out she was not guilty, people were ticked off.”

Steven Klosterman, who owns a property management company, said if Anthony were to stay in Orlando, “I think she’ll wind up like her daughter,” given the threats she has received.

“Good luck to her,” said Klosterman, 43. “She’s going to have a hard time.”

Security experts have said Anthony will need to hole up inside a safe house protected by bodyguards, perhaps for weeks, in case someone tries to make good on one of those threats. Ideally, several SUVs with tinted windows will pull up to the jail to whisk her away, probably in the middle of the night, the experts said. Jail officials have not disclosed when she will be released.

Exactly where she will go also remains unclear. It’s unlikely she’ll return to the home she once shared with her parents, as the trial left her family fractured. Defense attorney Jose Baez argued during the trial that Caylee accidentally drowned in the family pool and that Casey Anthony’s father, George, covered it up to make it look like a homicide. Baez also argued that George Anthony molested his daughter when she was a child — which resulted in psychological issues that caused her to lie and act without apparent remorse after Caylee went missing.

“Most of the time you can always go home, but she doesn’t have that option,” said Daniel Meachum, an Atlanta lawyer who has represented football star Michael Vick and actor Wesley Snipes. “Baez has to have somewhere for her to go for her to get herself together.”

Casey Anthony was convicted of telling detectives several lies in July 2008, when Caylee’s disappearance was reported. She said that Caylee had been kidnapped by a nonexistent nanny, among other things.

Caylee’s skeleton was found that December in some woods near the Anthony family home.

While defense attorneys argued that Caylee’s death was an accident, prosecutors alleged that Anthony suffocated her daughter with duct tape because motherhood interfered with her lust for a carefree life of partying with friends and spending time with her boyfriend. Jurors have told various media outlets that prosecutors didn’t prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt as required for a conviction — although most have added that they don’t think Anthony is innocent.

The summer months can often mean an influx of unwelcome guests. No, we’re not talking about visiting relatives…we’re talking about ants. And if you’re not into chemical sprays (which rarely seem to work anyway), it might be time to try a homemade approach. Here are 8 ways to get rid of ants using common items available right in your cupboards.

In my old apartment, I lived below a frat guy who never had time to clean his place. I didn’t really discover this until I had to ask him for a flashlight one day. When he opened his door, an empty bag of potato chips rolled across the floor like a tumbleweed. He was living in a wild west of his own bachelorhood.

The big problem came when he moved out. The ants that had been feeding in his apartment, now without a food source, started to crawl in through the odd crack in the ceiling, the tops of the windows…really anywhere they could. So, I had an ant problem. Chemical sprays seemed to work for a little while, but were a temporary fix. It would kill the immediate invasion of ants, but not the second and third fronts. I also didn’t like the idea of my house carrying the scent of eu de Raid (or the idea of my pets or guests breathing in the fumes).

I kept a list of the different natural methods I used to get rid of ants, all culled from internet message boards and advice-giving friends. Here’s what worked…and what didn’t:

– Mint leaves. Did you know that an ant can carry up to 50 times its own weight? Oh yeah, they can totally carry crushed mint leaves too. The thinking here is that the ants object to the mint’s scent compounds…but maybe mine wanted to make mojitos in their little ant colony? I don’t know.

– Cayenne pepper. The capsaicin in cayenne pepper is an irritant to ants, making them stay away. So, I sprinkled cayenne pepper around a particularly active spot near the floorboards. This worked for a day, but then Roscoe (my cat) tried to “clean up” the pepper. I had to stop this little experiment.

– Baby powder. The cornstarch in baby powder (I generally don’t buy the kind that contain talc) is another irritant to ants. Like the cayenne pepper, I sprinkled it around a particularly active area and waited. The ants did appear to go away, but at least two guests had thought I had spilled flour and tried to helpfully sweep it up.

– Cornmeal. This is going to sound a bit gruesome: Cornmeal makes ants explode. They take the grains home, eat them and then presumably drink some water. The grains expand inside the ant, and then boom, tiny fireworks. Did I see this happen? No. There was remarkably less cornmeal by the end of the first day, but the ants kept returning to bring home more cornmeal. I had effectively made an ant feeding trough. Forget this idea.

– Cinnamon. The ants walked around any area that had been dusted with cinnamon, but didn’t avoid the area entirely. (My house did smell lovely, though.) Many people swear by this one, so I’m wondering if they’re using a really strong, fresh batch of ground cinnamon. But for me, no dice.

– Bay leaves. Like the issue I ran into with cinnamon, the ants walked around any area that had a crushed bay leaf near it, but ultimately did not avoid the area entirely. Again, I’m wondering if fresh bay leaves would be more effective (since they do smell stronger, and ants allegedly hate their scent) than dried.

– Vodka. A 3-to-1 ratio of vodka to water, poured into a spray bottle, was recommended to me by a friend. I sprayed this all over the kitchen. While it did kill the ants, the kitchen also smelled of vodka, giving guests the wrong impression.

– Dish liquid and water mix. This is, hands-down, the most effective way to get rid of ants. I used about two tablespoons’ worth diluted in a pint of water. Transfer the solution into a spray bottle. Spritz near windows, doors and cracks, but don’t wipe it away. This apparently destroys the scent trail that alerts more ants to come on down. Then, spray any roaming ants with this solution to, well, kill them (and okay, then wipe the ants away). It works surprisingly fast.

Nobody wants to get into a fight with a health insurer, but it may be worth your while. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that more claims problems stemmed from annoying but often straightforward billing and eligibility issues than from disagreements over whether care was medically appropriate. What’s more, the odds are about 50/50 that if you appeal an insurer’s decision, you’ll win.

When Natasha Friedus’s son, Nofi, was born almost two years ago, her insurer refused to pay $1,500 of Friedus’s $7,500 hospital bill because she hadn’t gotten prior authorization for the hospital stay near her home in Seattle. The plan also sent a $600 bill to Nofi, because he’d neglected to inform the insurer that he’d be in the hospital for a few days. “Apparently he was supposed to call before being born,” Friedus says.

The new mother spent hours on the phone trying to sort out the problem, but she got nowhere. Finally, someone suggested appealing the decision to the insurer and asking for retroactive approval for her hospital stay. That did the trick, says Friedus, even though the insurer had never informed her that she could appeal the bills.

Under the 2010 health law, the situation should improve. Health plans will be required to inform members that they can appeal disputed claims internally within the health plan as well as to an independent review organization not affiliated with the health plan.

Coding is everything

As anyone who has tried to decipher a health plan’s “Explanation of Benefits” knows, coding is everything. That’s where many errors occur, experts agree. If the CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) code that describes the medical service or test you received doesn’t correspond to the ICD (International Statistical Classifications of Diseases) code that describes your diagnosis, your claim may well be denied, a decision that will probably be communicated via a “reason code” on your EOB.

Medical services aren’t the only thing that must be in sync with the diagnosis: “The CPT code needs to correlate with age and sex and place of service as well,” says Candice Butcher, head of Medical Billing Advocates of America, which helps consumers resolve medical billing problems. In other words, if the CPT code is for a routine physical for an adult, but the patient is a 10-year-old child, the claim will be denied, says Butcher.

Sometimes claims that appear to be denied because the treatment isn’t appropriate — a particular service isn’t considered “medically necessary,” for example, or is deemed “experimental or investigational” — are actually coding errors, say experts, because the diagnosis code is wrong, for example.

You can’t prevent providers from miscoding your care or insurers from misinterpreting your plan or eligibility, but you can ask your doctor or insurer to cross-reference the treatment with the diagnosis and make sure the two are in sync, says Nancy Davenport-Ennis, chief executive of the Patient Advocate Foundation, which works to resolve these and other problems with health insurance claims.

Phone calls didn’t work

Sometimes even seemingly straightforward billing problems take months to resolve. When Janet Wolfe was hospitalized in central Georgia following a diagnosis of lymphoma a few years ago, she received a $1,600 bill from the insurer because she had stayed in a private room, which their insurer would pay for only if there were no other options. The hospital had only private rooms, but despite numerous phone calls by her husband, Andrew, to try to sort out the problem, the insurer eventually sent the bill to a collection agency.

When the letter from the collection agency arrived, Andrew took it and drove to the hospital. He demanded to see someone who could address the issue. Eventually, with the help of the hospital’s chief financial officer, the insurer removed the charges. “No one was taking responsibility for fixing the problem,” he says.

Getting assistance

Such experiences illustrate the difficulty that people with serious illnesses may face when trying to manage their medical bills, says Stephen Finan, senior director of policy at the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. Having a family member or someone else to backstop the process is essential. “If [patients] get lost or overwhelmed, there’s someone else who can help them with this critical process,” he says.

Organizations such as the Patient Advocate Foundation are not the only sources of assistance: The new health law provided $30 million for state-based consumer assistance programs to help people appeal health plan decisions.

Claim denial rates vary significantly by insurer, according to the GAO report. In California, for example, the denial rate for six managed care insurers ranged from 6 percent to 40 percent in 2009. Whether you’re insured by a plan that kicks out many claims or only a few, it may pay to appeal. The study found that consumers were successful in appeals filed with insurers in 39 percent to 59 percent of cases. When they appealed to an independent reviewer, consumers prevailed roughly 40 percent of the time.

Before you file an appeal, talk with your insurer to understand why your claim was denied, says Cheryl Fish-Parcham, deputy director of health policy at Families USA, a patient advocacy organization. “The biggest mistake people make is that they write an appeal that doesn’t really address the reason for the denial,” she says.

Andrews writes for Kaiser Health News an editorially independent news service and a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan healthcare policy research organization. Neither Kaiser Health News nor the foundation is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Here are some recommendations for you when signing up for free stuff either from anywhere on the internet.

1) Do not use your real phone number, unless you either want to hear from the company, or know that you need to verify in order to receive the free item you requested. An easy way around this would be to sign up for a k7.net account, which lets you get a free phone #, and you can check your voicemail online. This way you can avoid getting telemarketing calls at home. Another free service you can use is google voice – google voice is a fantastic service.

2) Make an extra email address, through a place such as Hotmail, or Gmail. This will keep you from getting any spam in your normal email account.

3) Looking to get some free stuff on your own? Email or call the company your interested in. Most companies will give you something for free.

4) Get Firefox with Google Toolbar so you can use the autofill feature. This will allow you to sign up for a TON of free stuff without much effort! My favorite autofill site is RoboForm this is what I personally use – I love it! It is a blessing.

Deceptive “free trial” offers, alluring come-ons to try a diet-pill, teeth whitening strips, wrinkle cream or get a “free report” (that reveals where you can pick up thousands of dollars in government grants!), are among the nation’s most sweeping scams, likely costing consumers billions of dollars annually.

The Better Business Bureau put out its list of 2009’s Top 10 Scams Wednesday, but noted that those “free trial offers” just keep coming, spurring rafts of complaints. A recent crack-down by the Federal Trade Commission has convinced some online marketers to at least be a touch more up-front about the fact that you might get charged if you don’t cancel.

But a quick look at some of the companies that caused many of last year’s complaints found plenty of continuing abuses. When I Googled “Acai“–a weight-loss supplement supposedly touted by Oprah–it touted a free trial that supposedly would only charge me a buck for shipping, for example. But flip to the bottom of the page where you can link to the “terms and conditions” and lo and behold. If you don’t cancel within 15 days of their “initial ship date” you’ll get charged $79.90 and another $87.31 every month thereafter. Will you know their initial ship date? Not likely.

But that’s not all. Lucky duck that you are, by taking this free trial, you’ll also be signed up for a free-trial of a weight loss program that will cost you $9.95 per month until you discover this unauthorized charge on your credit card and cancel it.

Let’s say that you want to whiten your teeth. TeethWhiteningStar (a Google ad) offers a “risk-free* trial.” (I really like the way they put an asterisk right after “risk-free.” Unfortunately, they lead you to believe that the asterisk refers to the shipping and handling charge, when your real risk is far, far greater.)

If you click on the “terms and conditions” (written in minuscule type at the very bottom of the page) up pops up terms for “My Everbright Smile” saying that you have just 10 days from the time you type your credit card number into the web site to cancel your free trial. It doesn’t matter that you probably haven’t received the product yet. After that, they’ll charge you for “the full cost of the product” even though their terms don’t spell out what that cost is.

You can get an inkling of the costs by reading the online complaints, which indicate that several British victims were charged roughly $200 U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, this teeth whitening company has thoughtfully signed you up for several more free(!) offers from third-party affiliates, who will also slam your credit card for a raft of charges. These are called “negative option” agreements, and you can read more about them from my colleague Marlys Harris.

Here’s the good news if you’re a victim. Call your credit card company. Ask them to reverse the charges. Visa recently expunged 100 companies that it cited for “deceptive marketing practices” from its authorized vendor lists. If they get enough complaints like yours, they’ll not only reverse the charges, they’ll make it impossible for these crooks to take credit card payments.

Have you been taken by a free trial offer? Please tell us about it here to help warn other consumers before they get taken too.

You see them on television or the Internet, often for cosmetics or other products: call now for a free sample! Since few things in this world are truly free, prepare yourself by learning to watch out for the following red flags.

1. Don’t give your credit card number to cover “shipping and handling” if you call for a free sample.

2. Ask what the price is if after giving your address and other mailing information, you are told that monthly shipments of the product will arrive at the regular, or special, price. This might be a good time to decline and terminate the order.

3. Ask the order taker if you may cancel at any time if you want to receive the product. Also ask if you may delay shipments and if unwanted shipments are refundable. Listen carefully to the answer, as you still have a chance to cancel. Some companies do not allow refunds on certain promotions and give only credit for exchanges.

4. Try your free sample right away after it arrives. Decide if you want to continue to receive the product. The package should contain a receipt with the appropriate phone number. If you decide you don’t want any more shipments of the product, call immediately to cancel future orders, before the next order is charged to your credit card account.

5. Call the company to see if a refund or exchange is available if you forget to cancel or an order arrives unexpectedly. If you truly feel you have been misled, you can try to have your credit card company remove the charge from your bill.

To see the full list of the dumbest assaults and other crimes committed with weird weapons, please go to Weirdest Weapons.

TruTV.com contains a wealth of information about crime and punishment of any site on the web. It is one of my favorite all time sites for criminal information, along with some funny stuff like this post and the one prior to it.

So now, after the lamest excuses for murder, we continue with the weirdest weapons!

In Dunnellton, FL., a pre-dinner argument about bread escalated to a physical altercation when 53-year-old Elsie Egan, who insisted on sliced bread, allegedly hit Peter Schabhuttl, her roll-loving boyfriend of 16 years, on the head with an uncooked steak. Schabhuttl, 49, a disabled cancer patient, described the 10-16 oz. raw weapon to police, who took Egan to jail, leaving her meat-beaten beau to make his own bread choices. (Talk about making a big deal out of nothing – It’s bread, comes in many forms.. get over it)

South Carolina, An unnamed 15-year-old boy from South Carolina was the admitted culprit in a one-sided vehicular food fight, in which he allegedly threw a burrito out of a moving Dodge, sending it splattering all over the car and clothes of one John Addie. Addie, who had been driving along in his Honda when the flavor explosion ruined his day, was not amused by the juvenile prank. The teen terror was arrested and put in jail, where he was picked up by his dad. (I hope his Daddy gave him a proper spanking for this)

DeLand, FL., A father and son operating a convenience store in DeLand, Fla., in June 2008 found themselves facing a robber armed with a palm tree frond and a flip flop. The robber demanded money from the clerks, threatening them with his leafy weapon, until a customer chased him away with a stool. Useless as his weapons may have been, police still charged Gelando Olivieri, the alleged robber, with armed robbery. (Who wants to lay odds that the other inmates laughed at him every day?)

Fort Pierce, FL.(are we noticing a pattern here?), Just before Christmas 2006, Ronny White, left, got into a road-rage confrontation with Keith Ramsford, right, near Fort Pierce, Fla. The altercation escalated until White allegedly pulled out a pair of deer antlers he happened to have in his car and attacked Ramsford with them. White was charged with aggravated assault, and Ramsford with aggravated battery with a motor vehicle. (Attack of the killer deer antler… enough said)

Fresno, CA., When 21-year-old Antonio Vasquez arrived at a Fresno, Calif., home with the intent to rob it on Sept. 6, 2008, he came prepared. Brandishing an 8-inch sausage and a jar of all-purpose seasoning, Vasquez stole $900, hit one of the residents with the meat baton several times, and threw the seasoning into the face of another. Police quickly found Vasquez in an orchard nearby because he left his shorts, with his ID in the pockets, at the residence. (Can you imagine? I think I would have peed myself if someone came at me with a sausage, honestly.)

Peoria, Ill., A customer at a Peoria, Ill., McDonald’s drive-thru in March 2009 was so upset by the lack of egg in his McGriddle sandwich that he threw it at employee Patricia Munguia, 38, hitting her in the face. Police were unable to find the breakfast aggressor, but advised the victim to call them if it happens again. (Wow, anal much?)

Wenatchee, Wash., When high school student Joshua Hickson, 19, of Wenatchee, Wash., learned in September 2008 that his lunch mate had a peanut allergy, he apparently set out to verify this claim. Hickson grabbed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and rubbed its contents on the forehead of his allergic peer. Fortunately, the victim of the nutty assault did not suffer a reaction, but Hickson was charged with assault. (…. nutty assault. LMAO)

Tucson, Ariz., Two 24-year-old Tucson, Ariz., men were charged with criminal damage, disorderly conduct, vandalism and assault without injury, after flinging custard pies at conservative commentator Ann Coulter as she gave a speech at the University of Arizona in October 2004. The culprits, Phillip Edgar Smith, left, and William Zachary Wolff, claimed to have been throwing the pies at Coulter’s “ideas, not at her.” (Did they miss their auditions at a 3 stooges remake?)

Fort Pierce, Fla. (again), When Kimberlee Ann Cole, 18, found her 24-year-old boyfriend Joel Goldsmith smoking crack in the bathroom on July 11, 2008, she allegedly beat him with a toilet seat. The Fort Pierce, Fla., couple’s housemate called the police, who discovered blood all over the bathroom in which the fight took place. Cole was charged with domestic battery, and Goldsmith, whose lacerations can be seen in the mugshot above, faced a cocaine possession rap. (Can we say someone needs to test their drinking water?)

Royal Oak, Mich., After 42-year-old Robert McClain fled the scene of a car accident in July 2005, police followed him to his Royal Oak, Mich., home. When they got there, McClain was ready to defend his honor. After allegedly trying to hit an officer with a sword, McClain ran to his basement, where he put on a chain mail vest and gauntlets and picked up a wooden mallet. Unfortunately for McClain, medieval weapons work best against other medieval weapons; his ancient arsenal did not stand a chance against a Taser. (A wooden mallet? Really? Talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight.. only this wasn’t even as good as a knife)

Germany, Outside a Hamburg, Germany, train station, police surrounded a man wielding a samurai sword in October 2006. As the suspect swung his sword, an officer deflected his blow with a broom, giving the others enough time to take him down. (I don’t personally consider swords unusual weapons, but the fact the broom was involved made this one worth adding to the list)

I saw some of these and just about choked… some are completely baffling, others are just outrageous. People, remember that life is short and god, don’t take things so dang seriously. I have tried to rate these from least dumb to most dumb, though that was difficult considering they’re all dumb.

July 26, 2010: Police in DeKalb County, Ala., found the body of Rickey R. McCallie in the backyard of a Dogtown home. An autopsy concluded that he had been shot several times. A suspect emerged in Wayne Thomas McMinn, 62, a registered sex offender convicted of sodomy in 2004. McMinn and McCallie had been involved in a long-running dispute over stolen chickens which tragically resulted in McCallie’s death. McMinn was charged with murder and held without bond.

9) Killed Over Speakers

October 14, 2008: Kent Craig, a federal meat inspector from Ontario, Calif., was sentenced to 26 years to life for orchestrating the 2002 murder of his neighbor Craig Corle, who had borrowed a set of stereo speakers from him and hadn’t returned them. Cesar Guzman, a friend of Craig’s, testified that Craig asked him to find someone to beat up Corle. Guzman, who had loaned Corle $100 for a computer and had never recovered it, contracted a teenage gang member nicknamed Hard Time to do the job for $50. While Hard Time was inside Corle’s apartment, gunshots were heard, and Corle was later determined to have been shot ten times. After the shooting, Hard Time was seen exiting Corle’s apartment with a computer. Guzman pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and testified that Craig gave Hard Time the greenlight to kill Corle.

8) Killed Over XBox

Aug. 18, 2010: Marcus Donte Reed, 33, pictured, was charged with three counts of first degree murder after allegedly fatally shooting three brothers who he believed stole his Xbox. Police say Reed ambushed the brothers, Jerimiah, 20, Jarquis, 18, and Jean Adams, 13, while they were in their car. Reed’s girlfriend’s home had been burglarized earlier that day, and Reed had reason to believe one of the Adams brothers was involved.

7) Killed Over Parking Spot

Oct. 16, 2010: Detective Brian Stevenson, left, an 18-year veteran of the Baltimore police force, was out celebrating his 38th birthday when he became involved in an altercation with Sian James, 25, right, over a parking spot. James allegedly picked up a chunk of concrete and hit Stevenson in the head with it. Stevenson died later at a local hospital; James was charged with first degree murder.

6) Killed Over Hair Extensions

March 17, 2011: Above is a police sketch of one of the three suspects sought in the killing of a Dearborn, Mich., salon owner. The three suspects, two males and a female getaway driver behind the wheel of a silver Ford Focus, made off with 80 hair extensions.

5) Killed Over Remote Control

Feb. 11, 2011: In the Western Siberian village of Zhukovka, a 13-year-old boy shot his 17-year-old sister point-blank in the face with a hunting rifle during a fight over possession of the remote control. The boy did not face criminal charges due to his age.

4) Killed Over Chicken Tikka

Dec. 26, 2010: In the Rohini area of New Delhi, India, software engineer Himanshu Batra was getting out of his car at a market when his car door accidentally hit Surya Prakash, causing him to drop his plate of chicken tikka. A heated argument ensued, during which Prakash pulled out a pistol and fired four rounds, hitting Batra twice. Police traced Prakash by his car and arrested him in his home village of Khera Khurd.3)Killed Over Puppy Pee

May 9, 2010: Marine Corps veteran Charles Clements, 70, left, who has won several awards for his meticulously tended lawn in the Chicago suburb of University Park, had a reputation for verbally attacking anyone who stepped on his grass. When Joshua Funches, 23, right, allowed his fox terrier to urinate on the prize-winning lawn, Clements went on the offensive. The two men got into an argument that ended when Clements fatally shot Funches in the stomach. Clements, who had no prior criminal record, was charged with second degree murder and faced 20 years in prison, but was sentenced to only probation after it was determined that he had fired the gun after Funches punched him in the face.

2) Killed Over Chewing Gum

Oct. 18, 2006: A 14-year-old boy in Columbia, Tenn., was charged with first degree murder after killing his twin brother. The two were allegedly arguing over chewing gum when the teen grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed his twin in the chest.

And the most stupid reason to kill someone……

1) Killed Over Chopsticks

April 15, 2011: An outraged boyfriend who pushed his girlfriend down 12 stories after a fight over chopsticks was sentenced to 14 years in prison in Singapore. Tan Teck Soon, 19, jumped after Chong Kar Yin, 20, after pushing her, but scaffolding broke his fall and he survived. Yin died in the March 7, 2009, tragedy.

Stalker Types

Book cover: The
Psychology of
Stalking

Dr. J. Reid Meloy, author of Violent Attachments and editor of The Psychology of Stalking, is an expert on stalking behavior. Pathological attachments, he says, most often occur in males and generally start in the fourth decade of their lives. It follows a fairly predictable progression:

After initial contact, the stalker develops feelings like infatuation, and therefore places the love object on a pedestal.

The stalker then begins to approach the object. It might take a while, but once contact is made, the stalker’s behavior sets him up for rejection.

Rejection triggers the delusion through which the stalker projects his own feelings onto the object: She loves me, too.

The stalker also develops intense anger to mask his shame, which fuels the obsessive pursuit of the object. He now wants to control through harassment or injury.

The stalker must restore his narcissistic fantasy.

Violence is most likely to occur when the love object is devalued, as through an imagined betrayal.

Stalkers who are also psychopaths, Meloy says, experience only low levels of empathy or an absence of it altogether. Their relationships tend to be sadistic, based in power over others. He said he believes that this is associated with a lack of early attachment to others in the family. Meloy claims that psychopaths are biologically predisposed to antisocial activity because they have a hyper-reactive autonomic nervous system. Crime or exploiting others excites them. That means they’re motivated to do things that heighten their nervous system and have no real conscience about hurting others.

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that every year over a million and a half people are stalked, over two-thirds of them women. Ninety percent of women killed by husbands or boyfriends had first been stalked. One in 12 women and one in 45 men in the U.S. – about 10 million people – has been or will be stalked sometime in the future. . (Among celebrities and other high-profile people alone, one security company has amassed over 300,000 communications. )

While many stalkers only threaten harm, a small percentage carry out their threats, damaging property or harming pets. With the rise in popularity of the Internet, cyber-stalking has become yet another avenue of danger. Many stalkers have a prior criminal record and show evidence of substance abuse, a mood disorder, a personality disorder, or psychosis. At least half of all stalkers threaten their victims, which increases the possibility of violence. Frequency of violence averages 25 to 35 percent, with most violence occurring between people who have been romantically involved in the past.

The unrelenting harassment causes great emotional stress in the targeted victims. Some people lose their jobs or have to change their identity and move. They may suffer from extreme anxiety, sleep disorders and depression. Some consider suicide. If they have family members or children who are brought under the threat umbrella, they suffer even more from guilt and fear for the others. Even if these incidents get reported, restraining laws can do little against the verbal harassment. In fact some laws require that there be a genuine risk of danger or a pattern of incidents before formal protection is offered.

There’s no easy way to predict who might become a stalker. It could be a former boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse; a fellow employee who has spotted his target in some casual encounter; a hostile neighbor; a video store clerk; and even a stranger who happens to have seen the victim on the street. Even people who were not abusive prior to their obsession can become so in the throes of it, because according to Janet S. Rulo-Pierson, a hospital counselor, they slowly exchange reality for an imaginary world that’s more comforting and empowering.

Several stalker typologies have been developed, and according to Dr. Michael Zona and his colleagues from the University of Southern California School of Medicine, stalkers appear to come in three basic varieties, with a perverse twist on stalking that adds a fourth important category:

Simple obsessional
The most common form is male with a female with whom he was once sexually intimate.

Love obsessional
A love-obsessed stalker tends to idealize a celebrity or someone he has seen from afar and he develops an unrealistic belief that the target person will agree to a relationship.

Erotomania
Someone suffering from this more extreme obsession believes that the victim loves him or her.

False victimization
Claiming harassment and stalking when none exists, this behavior is usually carried on by people with histrionic personality disorders.

Another method of categorizing stalkers comes from the team who wrote the FBI’s Crime Classification Manual:

Non-domestic stalker, who has no personal relationship with the victim

Organized (based in a calculated, controlled aggression)

Delusional (based in a fixation like erotomania)

Domestic stalker, who has had a prior relationship with the victim and feels motivated to continue the relationship; this constitutes around 60 percent of stalkers and the aggression often culminates in violence.

Stalkers tend to be unemployed or underemployed, but are smarter than other criminals. They often have a history of failed intimate relationships. They tend to devalue their victims and to sexualize them. They also idealize certain people, minimize what they are doing to resist, project onto people motives and actions that have no basis in truth, and rationalize that the target person deserves to be harassed and violated.

While many stalkers view their actions within a delusional framework and therefore see no need to get help, a few do actually approach professionals. One case resulted in a landmark decision that shifted certain responsibilities onto the shoulders of therapists.

For those who aren’t aware, every 12 months you can request a free copy of your credit report. Forget the free credit report commercials that take you to a site that wants you to pay for their services, this is a legitimately free report from the 3 main credit reporting agencies; Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

These are the 3 primary agencies responsible for keeping track of your credit score and history. At any time, you can challenge anything in your credit report to try to get it wiped off and improve your credit score, as well as watch out for signs of fraud or identity theft, a big problem in this country today.

These reports are essential to anyone who plans on ever buying a car, a house, or even applying for some jobs, as well as some apartments or houses for rent. You’d be surprised how many places check credit reports these days. Making sure your credit score is good and accurately reflects on your bills, payment history and so on helps ensure that you are not the victim of fraud or identity theft.

This is the proper site for getting your credit report free every 12 months.

Also, a note to you that are challenging items in your report. It is best to do it during tax time, when places are too busy to look for the physical copy of your bills or statements and items will be dropped. As well as doing it during tax time, watch for anything over 7 years old. Anything over that age is not supposed to show up on your credit report unless you were sued or have filed bankruptcy. I generally challenge anything over 4 years old, which helps increase the likelihood that some things will be taken off your report that are negative. Never challenge anything positive, only negative items and if you see fraudulent activity, report it to the police immediately, have your credit cards cancelled and issued new ones, change your bank account and notify all credit reporting agencies of identity theft.

When I was a little girl I heard the most horrible story. My uncle had killed someone. An older lady, in fact. But apparently, this wasn’t as uncommon as I initially thought, as my father explained to me later. My uncle never talks about it, but it is something that happened and it could happen to you as well if you aren’t careful.

An elderly woman had taken the off ramp to get onto the highway. She was not speeding up sufficiently to meet the rate of speed of other people travelling on the highway. My uncle was driving his semi, towing cars and driving down the highway. As the woman pulled onto the highway, she pulled right in front of my uncle who never saw her in his mirrors because she had been in one of the many blind spots a semi driver has. He drove the semi onward, not realizing she was there and ran right over the top of her car and killed her.

I bring this up because my boyfriend drives a semi and usually has a 53′ trailer attached to the back. Often he has nearly hit someone because they crossed a lane, pulling in front of him and slowed down, or tried to drive in his blind spot as he attempted to switch lanes, even though he had been signalling for a fair bit of time to give people plenty of opportunity to get out of his way. He had a near collision the other day because someone driving their car while talking on their cell phone almost pulled right into the side of him, which would have killed them.

What many don’t realize is that these trucks are very heavy. They are often carrying heavy loads, making the truck weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 lbs, and sometimes even heavier. They can’t just stop. Their mirrors are designed to give them a better view of what’s around them but the longer the trailer, the bigger the blind spots they have. Even a flatbed has a wide variety of blind spots and the truckers just simply cannot see everything around them. It is YOUR job to be careful around semis. Do not drive in their blind areas, and pay attention to their signals. If you see they are trying to get over, move out of their way. Do not talk on the cell phone while driving on a highway unless you are using a hands-free set, do no text, and do NOT pull in front of a semi and slow down. That is a quick way to get yourself and anyone in your car killed.

Make sure you have sped up properly when exiting off ramps to make sure you are matching the speed of traffic on the highway to avoid possible collisions, especially if you see a semi anywhere behind you.

This is not only for your safety, but for the safety of your loved ones, friends, and for the trucker who has to live with the terrifying aftermath of what accident you caused with your carelessness. Remember, they can’t always see you, and I know several people who have nearly been smashed into a bridge or run off the road because they were driving in the trucker’s blind spots.

Thank you for your attention in this matter, for everyone out there, yourself included and people like my boyfriend and uncle who are out in the traffic every day driving long hauls so that we can have the products we need in our stores.

I have a genetic issue that causes me to be prone to high cholesterol. Right now, I am on medication to help control that, but I have worked to modify my diet to help relieve some of the cholesterol that I intake. I also have Type 2 diabetes, which means that I have to watch starches, sugars and carbs. I also have to be careful of calories because I am overweight.

So for me, cooking is an experiment in keeping myself healthy and off as many medications as possible. Right now, my diabetes is diet controlled. So every day is a challenge to see how different foods and ingredients affect my sugar levels. I also have to consider the amount of cholesterol in my ingredients, because I would like to eventually not require the cholesterol medications. I’ve had great cholesterol until recently, but within the last few months, my cholesterol has steadily gotten worse. Now it’s time to work even harder to cook healthier, better food that will work on my overall health and help me lose weight at the same time.

I’m well over 80 lbs overweight, but my goal is to get back down to 200 for now, which will mean losing another 40lbs. It’s coming off slowly but it is coming off. 2 years ago I was in a wheelchair, and could not walk without assistance. I stopped taking most of my medication since a lot of them were painkillers and within 2 months I was able to walk again with a cane. I still need it sometimes and I still have to use the mobile carts in the stores when shopping most of the time, but I am doing much better than I had been.

I grew up cooking hamburger helper and whatnot because I was the only girl and the oldest child and my father did not cook at all except the occasional eggs for breakfast. Since then, I have learned to use wine and acid in my cooking to improve flavor and have gotten to where I use little to no oil in almost everything I cook. I have learned some techniques that serve me well in the kitchen and I get a great amount of praise for the things I do cook from friends and neighbors that have sat in my house and eaten what I’ve prepared.

Eventually I would like to go to some culinary school and learn much much more than what I know now, and eventually possibly write my own recipe books. I hope to make more items from scratch and use less shortcuts and be able to cook tasty, healthy food that will be good for anyone with any type of medical condition that puts them on dietary restrictions.

All my recipes can be modified rather easily, as I don’t cook with much salt, preferring herbs for flavor. I love spicy food, but I realize not everyone does and I know that sometimes people will need to cut back on some of the heat I add to many of my dishes. I love hot peppers, just not too hot, though I’m not afraid to try anything. I see things like frog legs and alligator at the market and I am always tempted to buy them because I want to experiment. I’ll take a recipe someone else has done and turn it around to suit me once I’ve experienced what they have created because I love to find new flavors, new combinations, new techniques.

Cooking isn’t just a passion for me, it’s a way to survive. It’s a way to make sure that I’m going to live another 30 or more years without having serious problems with my health.

I hope that, knowing that, you will appreciate the recipes I provide as I provide them for what they are, which is my learning and growing as a cook.